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The New ‘Hybrid’ ENG

Hybrid transmission products, such as Vislink’s NewStream, combine microwave, satellite and cellular technologies and are used in vans like this one from Frontline.

SEATTLE—For the past half-dozen years, bonded
cellular technology—the backpack liveshot systems
using the cellphone systems for transmission—have
garnered most of the attention of the TV news crowd.
But in the background, more traditional microwave
and satellite liveshot equipment and the trucks that
house it have continued to thrive.

With the well-known advantages bonded cellular
enjoys, price, portability, quick connection and so
forth, what’s behind the demand for microwave and
satellite? One reason is control.

“The primary reason for TV stations having their
own signal path is that they can control it,” said Sunil
Naik, director of engineering at microwave radio supplier
Moseley Associates Inc. in Santa Barbara, Calif.
“Any issues that occur [on a microwave system], they
know how to handle it internally. On the cellular network,
when the network goes down, they have no recourse.”

In the end, it really comes down to having a connection
ENG crews can count on, according to Brad
Coleman, director of marketing at microwave equipment
builder Broadcast Microwave Services in Poway, Calif. “The resources
that are involved with a
microwave connection are
federally managed,” he said.
“The allocation, use and the
licenses, that provides that
connection that’s there,
that’s less impacted by the
heavy use of cellular systems,
and it’s just inherently
more reliable. There’s substantial
value in that.”

‘JUST ANOTHER TOOL’
It’s not just a matter of
getting crowded out of the
cellular bandwidth at a location.
As anyone who’s driven
back country roads and tried to make a call
knows, there are plenty of places where
there is no cellular network coverage, and
news stories have a habit of happening
right in those out-of-the-way spots.

With all that in mind, there’s still little
denying among traditional liveshot equipment
vendors that bonded cellular units
have a place in covering breaking news, but
they insist bonded cellular isn’t the whole
answer. “I think news departments consider
bonded cellular just another tool,” said Rex
Reed, director of business and product development
at news truck builder E-N-G Systems
in Concord, Calif. “I think news people
feel that [bonded cellular] won’t work at the
big event, that if everybody with bonded cellular
show up at the same place, at the same
time, everything will be oversaturated.”

The scenario on a breaking news story
seems to work like this. When an event first
happens, news teams rushing
to the scene can quickly fire up
their portable bonded cellular
equipment without worrying
about establishing a line-of-sight
microwave path or aiming a satellite
dish. But as more electronic
journalists arrive and people
in a gathering crowd begin to
send selfies and whatnot from
the location, cellular bandwidth
for the liveshot can become iffy.
The answer is somewhere inbetween:
to use the best of both
old and new technology to create
a “hybrid ENG” scenario.

“Broadcasters looking to expand their
video toolkit now have the option of hybrid
transmission products which combine technologies,
such as microwave, cellular, and
satellite, as well as more powerful outdoor
units,” said Jacqueline Roy, vice president of
marketing at microwave equipment maker
Vislink in North Billerica,
Mass. Different pieces of liveshot
technology can hand
the liveshot transmission duties
seamlessly between one
another as one path degrades
and another is ready to get
the signal back to the studios.

BOTH HAVE THEIR LIMITATIONS
It’s not a one-way street
when it comes to a signal
path degrading, where it’s
always the cellular networks
that become unreliable.
Rain fade on a satellite
dish or the need to lower a
microwave antenna mast in
a storm can open the door
to bonded cellular units riding
to the rescue.

Bonded Cellular, Vanmakers Link Up

Recently, traditional microwave and satellite
liveshot equipment and truck builders have
been integrating the newer bonded cellular
liveshot equipment into their systems. In a
turnabout, companies like bonded-cellular pioneers
LiveU and TVU Networks have begun to
package their cellular network equipment into
ENG vehicles outfitted with satellite and microwave
capabilities.

“We can build bonded cellular and Kaband
satellite capability into smaller trucks,
which are not as expensive, can reach more
places because they’re all-terrain, are easier
to park and so on,” said Ken Zamkow, head
of marketing for the U.S. and the Americas for
LiveU in Hackensack, N.J.

At the NAB Show this year, LiveU displayed a new ENG van
built by AMT for Sinclair, featuring the LiveU Xtender and
the LU700.

Not only does this combination provide the
advantages of bonded cellular—like going live
while the vehicle is en route to breaking news,
and on-site portability—the advantages of Ka
satellite mean that ENG crews won’t see their
lifeblood bandwidth eaten up by cellphone users
sending pictures home to mom.

Combining the two technologies into a
news truck system yields additional capabilities.
For example, a LiveU liveshot backpack
such as its LU500 can accompany the cameraman
up to several hundred yards from the
truck, transmitting via the cellular networks
back to the studios. But if the condition of the
cellular network degrades to where it threatens
that liveshot path, the LU500 can transmit wirelessly
back to a LiveU LU700 encoder in the
truck. From there the liveshot can be routed to
cell towers that might not be as busy, or into
the Ka dish for satellite delivery.

Frontline’s IP Vehicle Solution (IPVS)
will be installed as standard equipment
in any of Frontline’s broadcast
vehicle platforms. TVU’s MLink can
simultaneously aggregate multiple IP
data connections, including Ka or Ku
band satellite, microwave, WiFi and
3G/4G/LTE cellular, to transmit live
HD video at sub-second latency.

“Frontline ENG vehicles will be
able to deliver stable, reliable HD video
from anywhere under virtually any
condition,” said Jonathan Sherr, vice
president, Frontline Communications.

TV news operations can expect to see more
and more of these combinations as liveshot
equipment providers and ENG vehicle makers
race to deliver the best and most flexible (and
affordable) tools for the job.

Craig Johnston

A good example of a spot news story
that grew into multi-day live coverage was
last month’s flood at the UCLA campus.
“What seemed like a routine water main
break developed into a front-page story for
the whole country,” said Stephen Williamson,
director of broadcast sales for ENG
vehicle manufacturer Frontline Communications
in Clearwater, Fla. “Full-sized vans
and helicopters deployed for over two
days on this story to cover the emergency
response and damage from the flood.”

There are other advantages to a hybrid
news truck. “New developments such as
mast mounted cellular antenna configurations
combine the signal strength of bonded
cards with the height of the mast delivering
enhanced network access on a more
robust scale,” Roy said.

Some stories that news crews cover are
predictably going to lead to cellular liveshot
failure. “Bonded cellular is good for spot
news, but they have issues when you try to
do sports, or any type of large event where
multiple people show up,” said Thomas Jennings,
president of Accelerated Media Technologies
(AMT) in Auburn, Mass. “So the
trend we’ve had in the last year has been to
mate cellular bonding technology with Kasatellite
technology, and we’ve been turning
out Ka trucks like they’ve been doing out of
style.” Ka satellite technology is smaller and
less expensive than Ku equipment, and the
space time costs less. (See sidebar)

Another advantage that an ENG van
brings is creature comfort. Along with the
ability to transport and deploy liveshot gear
at a news location, these vehicles also often
have workspace for a reporter and laptop,
not to mention a heater for one weather extreme
and an air conditioner for the other.

Veterans who have worked out of ENG
vans will note an old-reliable rig that has
ridden into the sunset, the Ford E-350. Williamson
from Frontline, noted three candidates
for its replacement: The Ram ProMaster,
the new full sized Ford Transit and the
Nissan NV. Frontline’s engineering group
rated the three for ENG/DSNG applications:
Ram ProMaster-Strong, Ford Transit-
Stronger, Nissan NV-Strongest.

ENG’s Reed pointed out that technology
for the vehicles themselves advances
at a relative snail’s-pace compared with
liveshot electronics. “But you still have to
deal with all the essential vehicle issues,”
he said. “And while the size of the vehicle
varies some, fundamentally you still have to
have power, you still have to have a place
for people to sit, you still have to observe
all of the rules of the road, and the laws of
physics and gravity, those kinds of things.”

Williamson is bullish on the future of
ENG vehicles, which “are evolving with the
industry with new technology and capabilities,
and continue to be a valuable tool in
journalism and broadcasting, now and into
the foreseeable future.”